`War` Is Worthy Effort When Waged On Pbs

September 29, 1985|By Steve Daley.

The drumbeats in the land of Public Broadcasting signal a mournful tale this fall, a tale that will leave devotees of PBS without a ``major new domestically produced TV series,`` in the words of PBS president Bruce Christens.

Arguments can be raised about the whys and wherefores of this creative shortfall; some in the business point toward the Reagan administration and a sudden lapse in federal funding for public television.

If the parties in question ever choose to take up arms, they ought to check in with Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist and military historian. It is Dyer`s ``War,`` a worthy, eight-part series on that venerable institution, that helps kick off PBS` rendition of the new season.

``War,`` which begins its campaign at 9 p.m. Tuesday on WTTW-Ch. 11, is, in Dyer`s phrase, ``an anatomy rather than a history.`` While the title of the series may be daunting, ``War`` is a far better investment of your time than the hours the commercial networks will ask you to commit to the mini-series format this fall.

``When you begin putting together the bits and pieces of the institution that is war,`` Dyer said in a conversation last week, ``you have to start by making it coherent, at least to yourself. You have to understand that there is little about the experience of war that is unique to a people or a time.``

The universality of the experience, the common killing ground in all ages and in all parts of the world, is a thread running through Dyer`s ambitious, thoughtful handiwork. ``War`` is not, as the PBS ads for the series might indicate, a dry, chronological, forced march through 5,000 years of charges and retreats.

The first episode, ``The Road to Total War,`` is rather a traditional look at the ways in which we have labored to put ourselves at the brink of self-destruction. But in the second hour, in ``Anybody`s Son Will Do,`` Dyer and the series get rolling.

Dyer uses the United States Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., as the backdrop for his examination of recruitment techniques, basic training and, effectively, the making of combat-ready soldiers.

``There are a few people, a very few, really, who might be called natural soldiers,`` he contends. ``They`re not only inclined to the business of war but also you probably couldn`t stop them if you made warfare a crime.

``They`re a fraction of the people who wear uniforms, however. Societies pick young men and teach them how to kill. For the most part, they do it the same way, with the same procedures, the same types of psychological manipulation. In every society the armies are made up the most ordinary of people.``

Dyer tries to make distinctions in his series, a product of the National Film Board of Canada and a Canadian radio series, ``Goodbye War,`` that began in 1979.

``War is what nations do,`` Dyer said. ``Killing anonymous foreigners in large numbers for protection or gain is a product of what we call

civilization. It`s an institution rather than an instinct. I try to make distinctions between war and what is often called sectarian violence, as we see in Northern Ireland, and I try to make distinctions between war and terrorism.

``You blow up a hotel and you`re a terrorist. If you`re a nation, you blow up an Iraqi nuclear reactor and it`s called an act of war, even if it`s undeclared. There is a formal division, with some shadings. If you`re a terrorist group, it might be your ambition to become a nation, at which point you`d be entitled to have an army and kill foreigners.``

Dyer`s approach spares us from a rush of pop anthropology. His look at war does not begin with rats in a maze or clinical examinations of our adrenal glands. Without deadening its impact, he approaches war as an institutionalized form of behavior, like religion or economics.

``We`ve been without a major war for 40 years now,`` Dyer said, ``and there seems to be a measure of pride being taken in that. The fact is, 40 or 50 years between major wars is about average. Our perspective is skewed because the period between World War I and World War II was so brief. As a betting man, I`ve always been reasonably pessimistic about getting us out of the century without a major war. But I believe that because war is an institution, there are alternatives that can be found.

``What I don`t have much faith in is this notion of mutual deterrence, the balance of terror between the superpowers. Somehow, our governments seem almost proud of it, though it has never really been tested. When that happens, we`ll find out whether we believe there is something worth blowing up the whole world for.``